that empire and from every section of that society of
nations, the attitude which has marked that people and that race
towards the present war, are not without deep significance. Now at
last the name English People is co-extensive and of equal meaning with
the English race. The distinctions of rank, of intellectual or social
environment, of birth, of political or religious creeds, professions,
are all in that great act forgotten and are as if they were not.
Rivals in valour, emulous in self-renunciation, contending for the
place of danger, hardship, trial, they seem as if every man felt within
his heart the emotion of Aeschines seeing the glory of Macedon--"Our
life scarce seemed that of mortals, nor the achievements of our time."
Contemplating this spectacle, this Empire thrilled throughout its vast
bulk, from bound to bound of its far-stretched greatness, with one
hope, one energy, one aspiration and one fear, one sorrow and one joy,
is not this some warrant, is not this some presage of the future, and
of the course which this people will pursue?

Let us pause here for a moment upon the transformation which this word
English People has undergone. When Froissart, for instance, in the
fourteenth century, speaks of the English People, he sees before him
the chivalrous nobles of the type of Chandos or Talbot, the Black
Prince or de Bohun. The work of the archers at Crecy and Poitiers
extended the term to English yeomen, and with the rise of towns and the
spread of maritime adventure the merchant and the trader are included
under the same great designation as feudal knight and baron.

Puritanism and the Civil Wars widened the term still further, but as
late as the time of Chatham its general use is restricted to the ranks
which it covered in the sixteenth century. Thus when Chatham or Burke
speaks of the English People, it is the merchants of a town like
Bristol, as opposed to the English nobles, that he has in view. And
Wellington declared that Eton and Harrow bred the spirit which overcame
Napoleon, which stormed Badajoz, and led the charge at Waterloo. The
Duke's hostility to Reform, his reluctance to extend the term, with its
responsibilities and its privileges, its burdens and its glory, to the
whole race, is intelligible enough. But in this point the admirers of
the Duke were wiser or more reckless than their hero, and the followers
of Pitt than the followers of Chatham. The hazard of enfranchising the
mil